Effingham U12s move into 2nd

Another all-round team performance from the Effingham U12’s saw them beat Stoke D’Abernon on Sunday morning. Having been inserted into bat first, Jake Raffaelli (32*) and Aryan Chudasama (7) negotiated the opening overs until Aryan was struck on the pad low down and was given out leg before. A couple of further wickets fell with Sam Cobb hitting an early 4 before being bowled and Raymond Wing (8) once again falling to a spinner lofting a straight forward catch. So in came Ciaran Jarvis, keen to improve upon his brief innings the week before. He built a fine partnership with Jake and the runs flowed at a decent rate. Jake’s retirement inevitably slowed the scoring, but both Ciaran and Sam Partridge took the opportunity to capitalise on the deep Stoke field by running plenty of quick singles. Some excellent technique of running the bat in saved them both a couple of times, but Sam’s exploits, after his contribution of 14, was eventually curtailed with a close call run out. A flurry of wickets towards the end threatened to restrict Effingham’s opportunity to set a high total, but Ciaran (18*) and Thomas Stratten (2) combined well to squeeze a few more runs and finish with 126-7 off their 20 overs.

An early Stoke wicket from Jake gave Effingham some encouragement and the boys worked well as a team with some tight fielding and backing up. The number 2 and 3 batsmen for Stoke D’Abernon both escaped early dismissals with a couple of dropped catches, however, Thomas held on well to a catch at a sort mid-off and Isaac Keay again impressed with the ball to claim wickets before the Stoke batsmen were able to retire. Stoke’s innings now started to stutter and they were unable to run the quick singles to maintain the rate. After Ciaran claimed his first wicket for the club, Sam P and Jake were reintroduced to bowl at the end, and never looked likely to concede any significant runs to comfortably see out victory with Stoke finishing on 109-5. There was some notable fielding throughout the innings from Ollie Lewis, who saved possibly six boundaries, and also Isaac and Thomas in a backward square leg position with some crucial stops. It was also pleasing to hear the opposition manager commenting on the excellent team attitude of the Effingham boys in their encouragement of team-mates throughout the game.

Darren Wing